perennial, loosely tufted; rhizome short, thick, innovation buds short, extravaginal, covered with silky scales; culms erect, slender or more or less robust, 1 1/2–3 ft. long, smooth, glabrous, 4–5-noded, internodes more or less exserted; sheaths tight or somewhat lax, finely striate, glabrous excepting the lowest bladeless ones (innovation scales), smooth, lower at length dry and scarious; ligules very short, truncate or the uppermost oblong and up to 1 1/2 lin. long; blades linear, long tapering to a setaceous point, up to 1 ft. long, 1 1/2–4 lin. broad, flat and flaccid, or rolling up when dry, more or less glaucous, glabrous or finely hairy on the upper side, smooth beneath, scaberulous above or all over in the upper part; panicle large, oblong to linear, open or contracted, more or less nodding, 1/2 to more than 1 ft. long; axis very slender, terete; branches few to very many in distant semiwhorls, finely filiform to capillary, scaberulous, lower 2–6 in. long, often undivided to 1/2 their length from the base; branchlets few, subracemose, contracted; pedicels very unequal, the lateral usually very short; spikelets oblong-lanceolate, greenish or tinged with purple, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long; glumes acuminate, rather broad when expanded, 3- to sub-5-nerved, side-nerves very short; valve obovate to oblong, 1 lin. long, smooth, glabrous, rigidly membranous, whitish, 3-nerved; awn a very fine and caducous flexuous bristle, 1 1/2–2 lin. long; lodicules 2, oblanceolate; anthers 3/4 lin. long, tips very minutely penicillate; grain obovoid-oblong, over 3/4 lin. long, terete. null
